This point 100x times. I am more paranoid about COVID than most people are because I have an autoimmune disease (which is mild and seems to not really affect outcomes). While my autoimmune caveat can be written off, I see most people seeing death as the only bad outcome and framing their risk tolerance and mitigation based on that. What has given me extra concern from the start is the damage done by COVID for patients who survive and even have a mild case. The rates of Long COVID (potentially overdiagnosed because of similarities with pandemic restriction related depression) are sufficiently high that it more concern than is given.

The vast majority of cases for someone who is fully vaccinated are asymptomatic or mild. The risk of having a severe enough case to require any sort of medical attention is quite low, and for those people who do need it the new antivirals seem to be working very well.

Death is not the only bad outcome for most viruses/diseases, but we only really track death so that's what we compare.